SNAP Education

The goal of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) education is to encourage participants to make healthy food choices within a limited budget and to prioritize foods acquired through emergency food systems. SNAP-Ed works with Food Bank partners to ensure that low-income Delawareans are receiving a variety of healthy foods when visiting local pantries. It is a constant struggle for food-insecure families to purchase enough food for a healthy and adequate diet. In order to stretch food dollars and keep stomachs from being empty, families often resort to purchasing inexpensive products with little nutritional value. The result is a diet high in calories, saturated fat, and added sugar, and low in fruits, vegetables, and lean protein. This puts food insecure individuals at risk for becoming overweight and developing a wide range of related health issues.

The SNAP-Ed Department at the Food Bank of Delaware will be offering multiple programs associated with its Healthy Partners project during the 2018 fiscal year.

Healthy Policies for Healthy Partners

Since foods distributed by the Food Bank of Delaware meet the chronic needs of low-income families, it is important to provide healthful foods to enable clients to make the healthiest choices possible. The Food Bank of Delaware’s Foods to Encourage Nutrition Policy guides the Food Bank’s decisions in regards to food procurement and distribution to increase clients’ access to healthy foods while simultaneously alleviating hunger and food insecurity.

Healthy Pantry Partners:

The Healthy Pantry Partners project aims to assist the Food Bank of Delaware’s partner agencies to prioritize SNAP-eligible clients’ access to Foods to Encourage by providing nutrition education within the Food Bank of Delaware’s food pantry partner’s policies. The Community Nutritionist/Community Nutrition Educators will visit emergency food pantries to assess the variety and quality of foods offered and the effectiveness of the site’s promotion of healthy foods. Based upon these assessments, the Food Bank of Delaware SNAP-Ed staff will utilize the Healthy Pantry Partners to make recommendations to site personnel and volunteers on ordering and procurement of healthy foods, behavioral economics strategies including site layout and signage, and nutrition education classes to encourage participants to choose healthier foods.

Healthy Children’s Nutrition Partners:

The Food Bank of Delaware provides more than 300,000 after-school and summer meals to children at risk of hunger each year. These meals play a critical role in helping children get the nutrition they need for health and growth. In order to maximize the effectiveness of these meals, the Food Bank of Delaware will implement behavioral economics, direct education, and indirect education at feeding sites to encourage more children to enroll in these programs and to consume all their meal components. The SNAP-Ed team will utilize the Healthy Children’s Nutrition Partners Handbook to train site personnel to promote healthy eating behaviors, provide incentives for children to try new foods, and more!

Healthy Senior Nutrition Partners:

The Healthy Senior Nutrition Partners project will be implemented at Food Bank of Delaware’s partner Senior Nutrition Sites located at, but not limited to, churches, community centers, and public housing sites across the state of Delaware where more than 27,000 meal packages are provided each year. Participants will be given quarterly nutrition newsletters and the opportunity to host nutrition education classes for seniors such as Eat Smart, Live Strong and Senior Nutrition Sites Food Demonstrations.

Other Healthy Partners:

The SNAP-Ed department will also provide ongoing direct and indirect education at qualifying farmer’s markets, schools, health and community fairs, pantries, mobile pantries, state service centers, Hunger-Relief Partners and more throughout the year to continue to encourage Delawareans to make healthier choices.

In accordance with Federal civil rights law and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) civil rights regulations and policies, the USDA, its Agencies, offices, and employees, and institutions participating in or administering USDA programs are prohibited from discriminating based on race, color, national origin, sex, disability, age, or reprisal or retaliation for prior civil rights activity in any program or activity conducted or funded by USDA.

Persons with disabilities who require alternative means of communication for program information (e.g. Braille, large print, audiotape, American Sign Language, etc.), should contact the Agency (State or local) where they applied for benefits. Individuals who are deaf, hard of hearing or have speech disabilities may contact USDA through the Federal Relay Service at (800) 877-8339. Additionally, program information may be made available in languages other than English.